We haunt every medium we make.

September 30, 2007

More on Silver Ladder: the ARG community takes hold

Silver Ladder is more complex than it seems. It's not just a mysterious website, but an alternate reality game (ARG), or a piece of chaotic fiction, or perhaps performance art. It features characters and organizations struggling and collaborating across a dreamlike landscape of websites, conversations, physical buildings, and persons living or dead. http://www.silverladder.com/ is the starting point (read yesterday's post for a description). But, as Unfiction forum readers discovered, the story is based in many venues, including MySpace, YouTube, instant message, phone, and also the Silver Ladder site.

Let's assemble a narrative, starting with summer of this year. The Silver Ladder domain has been the home to an art studio, or an artist's site, run by Shane Watson, as far back as 1999. In June 2007 the main page (copied in archive.org) carried a paragraph informing the world that the site was down, and had nothing to do with the Halo 3 ARG. In July the Silver Ladder site changed drastically. Instead of being a digital artist's portfolio and set of personal pages, it became artwork without identification. The reason? AboutUs, a wiki-based directory, carries a description of Silver Ladder with this obituary note:

Silver
Ladder is a site formerly run by Shane Watson, who was confirmed dead
at 11:11 PM on June 11, 2007 from injuries sustained from a car
accident in Tucson, Arizona. Mr. Watson was the only person injured in
the accident, as it was a one-car accident, and he did not have a
passenger in his vehicle. Following the passing of Mr. Watson, control
of the site was handed over to Ms. Athena Snows of Seattle, WA. The
site has since been run as a form of interactive art exhibit in tribute
to the late Mr. Watson.

Shane Watson: we'll return to that name below. Same for 11:11.

In September, the story expanded. A mysterious YouTube video appeared on the 20th, entitled "The Two of Spades Speaks," and introducing several themes: playing cards, rabbit hole (classic ARG note), November 11th, and the Silver Ladder URL. The title's syntax also implies the idea of playing cards as characters.

On the following day a second YouTube video appeared, summoning collaborative help in finding out "the information." The speaker described a set of cards, implicitly structuring the search project, of which "only the Deuces are available". More cards are to appear, but only with increasing difficulty. The file's tags call out to ARGs, while touching on some themes from the Silver Ladder site:

A crisis struck around September 24th-25th, as a new character appeared and attacked: The Korporation. The Silver Ladder main page was apparently hackedby the Korporation. Athena Snow's MySpace was hacked, too, and some inserted content referenced Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. One Unforum poster received a message from Two of Spades, freaking out, worried about getting in touch with Athena, and insisting "if anybody asks you tell them that the plan for 11/11 is still on."

Also on the 26th Athena Snows appeared in an IRC chat (pdf) conducted by Unforum posters, and offered a series of clues: an object was to be found "in a fairway," aces are characters, and the entire game should last about one year (one card per week).